A number of polyimides have gained considerable importance as high-performance
polymers during the last 2 decades primarily because of their excellent thermal stability
and toughness. Some applications, however, require property enhancements and the desired
improvements can often be obtained through incorporation of ceramic-like particles such as
silica. Such hybrid inorganic−organic composites are frequently obtained using the in situ
generation of the dispersed inorganic phase by the sol−gel technique. A number of studies
have now been carried out on the preparation and characterization of such hybrid polyimide
composites, and the purpose of this review is to give a brief account of the strategies used
for this purpose and to describe some of the properties of the resulting composites.
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